Sacrifices
by Engar
Summary: In the Android torn Mirai universe hope seems all but lost. Trunks, the only surviving warrior, is still too young to go toe to toe with the Androids. However there is someone out there with nothing to lose and everything to gain. And she has a plan..
1. Chapter One

She walks along the torn and broken road, leather boots scuffing against the ground and sending up little smoke signals of dust to show her passing. Her steady gait isn't hurried, its been going steady for hours and shows the intent of continuing for hours. Ahead of her a city is growing closer, still far enough off that the destruction isn't immediately evident. Walking along a deserted road, tall buildings looming over the horizon.. You could almost believe this wasn't a world brought to its knees.

[_"You're leaving, aren't you?"_

_Hand on the door handle, she hesitated. There had been a time in her life when she wouldn't have, when she would have forced the door open and never looked back. That time was gone now, and she had the childlike figure standing behind her with solemn eyes to thank for it._

_"This isn't the first time I've left," she replied, not turning to face him._

_"It will be the last though, wont it?" _

_She had tried to be discreet, as discreet as possible in a small wooden cabin with three rooms in total. At all times she had felt paranoid, had been looking over her shoulder to make sure he hadn't been watching her. He hadn't but it wasn't as if he needed to. Turning slowly and brushing the unruly golden locks of hair from her eyes, she regarded Choutzu._

_"I can't stay here, I have to do something." Choutzu smirked humorlessly, a disturbing look on his innocent face._

_"What will you do? What can you do that our friends could not.. that.." he winced and trailed off, not that he needed to finish. She knew what he would say._

_In more ways than she could count, she missed him. He had taken her in, a confused jumble of anger and fear, and with Choutzu had helped her to become as close to normal as was possible. And, though shy, she could feel him drawing closer with every year. And then _they _had come and taken him away from her, leaving her all alone in the wilderness; Choutzu had felt the pain of loss too much to comfort her. They had taken him from them, from her.. Her..]_

".. Tien." She was closer now, the cracks that spider webbed up the walls of the buildings nearby gave the city a dead look. 

Of course the corpses hanging out of the window helped with that.

The devestation was mixed up, some of it had happened days, possibly even weeks ago, while other holes and craters were obviously recent. Those who could leave had done so a while back leaving all but the barest of supplies by the looks of it. Kicking idly at a half opened back-pack , she reflected on the stupidity of mankind. Sure getting out of the city saved you from the present danger, but what happened out in the desert when you have no food and no water. She didn't have to wonder, the road had been lined sporadicly with the dead. Some from starvation, others from assault and, from what she could make out, theft.

"Welcome to the world of tommorow," she muttered under her breath, sitting on the warped wreckege of an old hovercar and taking a swig of her bottled water. "United people my ass.."

The world had been a happy place once, she could remember smiling faces. A wedding? Son marrying some girl he hadn't seen for years, God was there to do the service apparantly. Memories of those times were hazy, after all she had two sets. Trying to merge them was impossible, they could only be seen through the eyes of two people who didn't exist any more. For the moment at least.

The happiness was there though, in both versions she could remember the laughing and the smiling faces. There had been destruction and terror but in the end there were always happy faces. Not this time though. This broken world had been robbed of the innocent grin, the cocky smirk, the reserved smile. Those faces that she could remember so well out of her murky past, they were gone and that was why the world was still broken. 

Lying back, she tried to collect her thoughts which were becoming more and more jumbled. It was, she suspected, a result of being further and further from Choutzu's influence. He had warned her, he had said that she could suffer a..

[_"..relapse, you know what that means."_

_"I know," she replied, leaning back against the door and twirlling a revolver in her hands in the idle way of one who isn't really aware of what she's doing. "I understand what might happen.."_

_"Will happen, and thats not the least of your problems!" It wasn't often that Choutzu raised his voice, even in battle. It made it bite even harder and he appreciated that fact, using it to try and force her to back down. "The Androids are more powerful than you can possibly imagine, even Goku wouldn't have stood a chance.."_

_The gun froze in her hands and she glared at Choutzu, as if daring him to say it again. It didn't work with Choutzu though, he just stared right back until her eyes began to water. Trying to hide her uneasyness, she shrugged and looked at the ceiling. She needn't have bothered, she couldn't hide anything from Choutzu that he really wanted to know._

_"I'll think of something.."_

_"I know you!" he snapped, his soft tones turned hard and malicious, "You'll try and shoot him and get yourself killed! You'll end up just like Ti-"_

_There was a resounding click that echoed through the cabin, the revolver was cocked and aimed at Choutzu's chest.._

_"Careful," she whispered. After a momentary gasp of shock, Choutzu brought himself to his full, if diminuative, height. _

_"Pull the trigger then," she closed her eyes as he spoke, feeling the gun grow minutely lighter in her hands, "if you're serious about leaving then pull the damn tri-"_

_Choutzu was cut off again, this time by a deafening bang that escaped through the cracks in the walls and the door and sent birds scattering into the sky. From the vantage point of an over hanging Birch, an aggrivated squirrel glared at the offending building. Before it could resort to violence (aka, throw nut) it was spooked into scampering down the tree and towards safety, fleeing from the blue glow which was coming out of the windows.._

_Inside, Choutzu was enveloped in a aura of blue light. His hands were raised and his eyes focussed on hers. The spinning ball bearing floated in the air surrounded by its own blue glow, bobbing up and down like a tiny world._

_"I knew you didn't want to really harm me," he raised two fingers of his right hand, "but I need to make this clear." _

_Choutzu's eyes hardened to that of blue steel and he swept his hand around. The ball bearing blurred sideways, slicing a hole in the side of the wall and shooting through the forest and the occasional tree trunk. Then he opened the palm of his other hand, her gun flew spinning out of her grip to come to a halt a few feet from her face. His gaze burning into her, Choutzu closed his hand into a fist. _

_"I am nothing compared to the Androids!"_

_Before her very eyes the gun seemed to implode, crumpling up into a sphere no bigger than a golf ball._

_"Yet I could destroy you!"_

_The ball began to glow red._

_"This house!"_

_The surphace bubbled and hissed._

_"**This whole forest!**"_

_Choutzu snapped his fingers like the crack of doom and pointed at the tiny hole the ball bearing had made. Then the boiling sphere of metal began to actually pour through the air and out through the hole, going where she couldn't see. When she looked back Choutzu was resting on a wooden chair next to the plain table on which they had eaten so many meals, his head held in his hands._

_"I'm sorry, I went too far.." He rubbed his eyes and looked up at her through the tears, "I know you think you have to go, I know that nothing I can do will convince you otherwise." He looked at his hands again, "And I know I cant make you stay."_

_In the few seconds that had passed she hadn't moved, but now she did. She knelt beside the little man, caught eternally in a childs body, and kissed his forehead softly. It was more compassion than she would have given to her own family a few years back, if she had ever known any of them. _

_"Thank you Choutzu, this is something I need to do.." He nodded and stood up, following her to the door and watching as she walked to the edge of the clearing. She waved to him and turned to go._

_"Lunch!" called by her name, Lunch turned back to see the small boy smile sadly at her, "I'll keep the home fires burning for you.."_

_The significance of the phrase wasn't lost on her, but it made the burden on her heart a little harder to carry all the same._

_The image of Choutzu sitting by a fire, staring into it until the day he died, was hard to shake. For Lunch didn't intend to come back._]__

Groaning, Lunch leaned up and shielded her eyes from the dark red of the sunset.  She berated herself while stretching out her limbs, that was a few hours she could have put to good use. The area was already starting to cool down, soon the heat that saturated the ground would seep away and she would find herself in a very bad position. She needed to find shelter and find it quickly. 

It was then, as she scanned the area for a convenient doorway, that she noticed the clouds of smoke and dust that hovered in the sky. She strode to the end of the street and peered cautiously around the building to see three figures dance in mid-air. 

The first two figures she knew to be the Androids immediately, along the road she had met a few survivors, each baring a tale of loss. The descriptions were always the same, what they wore and how they looked. What most of the poor broken souls seemed to focus on was how normal they looked, they didn't appear that different from everyone else. And yet they drove cars into people, tore others in two and delighted in the general misery they created together. It was from those descriptions that the 'Plan' had taken root in her mind and slowly, but steadily grown throughout her travels.

The other figure though was unfamiliar, the only recognisable feature she could make out was his spikey blonde hair. Tien had described the transformation that Goku had been capable of, which led her to the conclusion that this was the son she had never met. Gohan.

Whoever he was, he was clearly outmatched by the tag-team style fighting they were inflicting on him and was being bounced around and through several buildings. Once or twice he was knocked out of his golden state, giving Lunch a glance at his curious purple colored hair, but he stubbornly kept changing in order to fight. She followed the fight as it moved along the city, staying far enough away to go unnoticed but close enough not to lose track. 

Eventually, having reached the outskirts of the city, the Androids seemed to tire of him. A blast which looked small compared to some of the earlier ones sent the tired warrior skidding backwards along the grassy turf. Caught between self preservation and loyalty to Son's child, Lunch held one hand open behind her back and concentrated. A second later it was holding the reassuring weight of a fully loaded Magnum, most powerful handgun in existence. As far as she knew.

Lunch was a woman of few words and in the early days that word had been "Die!" When it came to plans she had been completely at ease settling herself in the 'Shoot first, ask quetions later' philosophy. But that was then and this was now. No matter how terrible her headaches were, how horrifying her nightmares were becoming, how she longed for the peace Choutzu had been able to instill upon her with a mere thought, she refused to fall back into the way she had been back then. It brought peace, yes, but a fragmented peace. There would be no more blackouts if she could help it, no more waking up not knowing what she had done the night before.

_This _Lunch could and did think, and this is what she thought..

_I may not be able to beat them, but the boy can. So I'll hang the plan and draw their fire.._

Not the most brilliant of plans but Lunch was set. While the two Androids bickered over who would finish the boy off, Lunch crawled into a broken office and climbed her way through the rubble and into the first floor. Leaning out of an elephant sized crack in the wall, she steadied the gun on her arm and aimed a little over the male Android's head..

"Sister," came his mocking voice, "I clearly hit him more times than you. Therefore I win, therefore I get to deliver the final blow."

"Brother," replied the strained tones of an older-sister, "Your games stopped being funny years ago, before the one we handled together you killed the last warrior so I claim this one as my own."

The males head twitched towards the purple haired boy's form, "that midget was only half a fight. I demand the child to make it a full go, besides you got to destroy Piccolo and he was worth two Vegeta's whom you also, if I remember correctly, destroyed. Even though it was my turn!"

"He insulted me."

"He said you looked like a fashion reject, which in fact you d-"

The gunshot was heard from miles around, echoing between the dead building, ulluating through the alleyways, shocking Lunch so much that she almost fell through the crack she had been leaning against. She had the perfect vantage point to see what happened next, the male Android flipped his hand around and a chunk of wall beside her fell away as a bullet moving near the speed of sound sliced right through it and embedded itself in the wall on the other side of the building. 

"Monsters!" a bedraggeled old geezer was stumbling towards the Androids, moving through the street beside Lunch's building with a revolver clutched tightly between his wrinkled hands. "My son! Give me back my son!" The gun flared into life again and again the Android flicked the bullet away. The gun sounded out three more times, the old man getting closer with every second, until he was standing right infront of the pair, glaring at his gun in frustration. The male gave the old man a lopsided grin. 

"All outta bullets?" He turned back to his sister and beamed, "All outta bullets." She merely rolled her eyes and pretended to take interest in the sky.

"You can be such a child, Seventeen." He shrugged and turned a cold smile on the old man.

"No appreciation for humor," he shrugged again and pushed himself away from the wall he had been lounging against. "I have to say it was brave of you to try this. Stupid, but brave." The old man was still staring at his gun, shuddering with frustration. "Look, I'll give you a ten second head start to make it fun. What do you say?" 

In one movement the old man looked up, pressed the revolver which still contained one more bullet against Seventeen's neck and pulled the trigger. 

"I say your cruel games are over, monster!" He turned from Seventeen who was frozen where he stood and glared at his sister, Eighteen, who was trying unsuccesfully to stifle her laughter. Aggrivated further, the old man dove one hand into his pockets for another bullet.

"You just wait missy, I'll see you join your brother soon enough!" He pulled his hand from his pocket, scattering bullets onto the ground. Cursing and grunting, he kneeled down and tried to pick bullets from the dusty ground while the female's sniggering grew louder and louder. 

"Damn it all!" he pressed his hands against the ground and looked at her again, "what the hell are you laughing at?!" A foot caught the old man in the small of the back and pressed him firmly against the ground.

"I was wondering that myself," came a cool voice, edged with malice.

"Really brother," Eighteen's monosylabic voice replied, still containing hints of humour, "you were caught completely off guard by some dithering idiot." 

"Yes," he could almost feel the monsters penetrating glare on his neck, "yes I was, wasn't I? This, sister, is what happens when people disobey the rules of the game. People who dont play fair dont get to have any fun next time round." The voice tightened in a terrifying kind of smuggness. "And there will be a second time round." 

The Android's unaccounted for foot smashed down on the old man's right arm, giving out a sickening crack as the old bones snapped like twigs. The proccess was repeated on his left arm and both legs, reducing his limbs to useless lumps of flesh and pain. 

"Now," murmured Seventeen brighty, "we'll see how fast you can run."

It only took 2 hours for the Android's to grow tired of cheering the old man on as he edged his way back towards the city. And then it was only after he had been dead for half an hour. By that time, if they had remembered to look, the purple haired boy would have been missing. Along with a working, if dented hovercar. If someone had to die for someone else to live, so be it. But if this one was to live on, he'd have a chance at least.

The plan was complete.


	2. Chapter Two

Certainly been a while since I wrote the first chapter. For some reason I couldn't finish this one but hopefully now I'll be back on the right track. 

Knight's Shadow and SaiyanLover, thanks for the reviews. My first two ever, for my first Fan-Fic! I've had this idea for a while, stewing in my head. I owe it to DoraMouse, a great writer who rekindled my love of minor DBZ characters. I also 'borrowed' Ranchi and Kushami from DoraMouse and give full credit, not my own invention. 

Along the long broken highway, a hover car sent dust flying in streamers behind it as it cut through the darkness of a long abandoned road. It was, if the wristwatch attached to Lunch was reliable, around 3 am in the morning, which meant that she had been going for well over 5 hours. The car was tougher than she had given it credit for; a steady 50 mph had seen her out of the city and close, according to her fuzzy memory, to the city holding Capsule Corp. The name, though probably something simple like South or North City, was lost to her. Lots of things were becoming lost to her lately, it was getting worse the further away she got. And it was causing bigger problems than memory lapses.

The hands that gripped the wheel of the car were shaking slightly despite a reasonably smooth ride, for reasons she could all too easily explain she kept feeling the urge to change to a faster gear and step down hard on the accelerator. It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't, at the same time, have to deal with the urge to change down to a slower gear and relax. They weren't saying anything exactly, but she could feel the two consciousnesses stirring in the back of her head. 

While she was more like the more hostile Kushami in some respects, she was more of a mix than many of her friends would suspect. The blonde hair and almost constant glare was just a result of the aggressive personality's obvious superior strength, it had maintained a surface presence in her. However her passive, Ranchi, side worked more subtly. She didn't shout as much any more and shooting was no longer the solution to every problem. She considered what others thought and actually tried to accommodate them, occasionally. 

This was who Lunch was now, a combination of the qualities of two different people. Whether she had been this way as a child was uncertain, those were just more memories buried in the past. Everything was so hazy that she could have been anyone or anything; she had given up thinking about it years ago. To go back to being two people, separate, would mean her death. She couldn't decide whether that would be a good or bad thing.

Reaching to the passenger seat beside her she idly brushed the boy's purple hair and gave him a quick glance. It was strange really; she would have expected the child of Goku to at least bare a passing resemblance to him. This boy's features, while innocent in sleep, didn't seem to have the naivety that she could remember in Goku's smile. Her lips twitched briefly as she leaned back, even in memory his smile was infectious. The boy though, his features were softer. Under the dirt and scratches she could see something very different from Goku, in fact the only person she could think of that looked anything like the child was Bul-

Out of the dark and into the beams shooting from the headlights of the car, a coyote froze on the road and turned a maddened eye from the freshly killed corpse of a rabbit and onto the car. It hesitated, caught between fear and hunger, which meant that Lunch had no choice but to yank hard on the wheel and send the hover-car skimming over the rocky barren ground. Seconds later she was back on the road, cursing all fauna in general, and completely oblivious to the train of thought that had just been derailed.

[_"Listen, if you don't come out of the house pretty damn soon you wont live long enough to regret it!"_

_Leaning casually against the brick wall, relaxing in the heat that was beating down on her, Lunch adjusted her grip on the double barrel shotgun held in her hand and clicked her tongue with irritation. It was the first real sign of human life she had met since emerging from the forest, a small village that had appeared dead up until she had noticed a head peaking through the door of one of the houses. _

_That house was the one she had her firearm trained on at that very moment, gaze moving slowly from the flaking paint of the door to the cracked and dirt encrusted windows. To the untrained observer it appeared abandoned but years of living with Choutzu and..., well something had rubbed off. She had noticed that it seemed by far the worst place in the town, in fact the two wooden steps leading up to the porch looked as if they had been broken by hand. It made a crude kind of sense, if your house looked in terrible disrepair why would the Android's bother destroying it? Or any other 'survivors' bother looting it.._

_"Its just me, one little 'ole girl. What you scared of?"_

_Her eyes picked out the bullet holes that had turned the porch bench to Swiss cheese, a familiar yet still uncomfortable feeling stirring inside of her._

_"About the bench," she began, moving from experiencing guilt to curing it in one giant step, "I'm sure it can be repaired.."_

_Just about then she felt the sudden cold of metal on the back of her neck, contrasting with the sudden brush of warm air as a gruff voice muttered behind her:_

_"But you, little girl, can not"_]

Lunch rubbed her eyes fruitlessly, adjusting her grip so she could lean back against the reassuringly hard seat. In some far off way she knew that it was reckless to keep driving in her exhausted state. She was putting herself in danger, putting the boy in danger, putting the Plan in danger. However in the distance the city was growing larger and larger, a dark collection of shapes and pinpricks of light that advertised civilisation. She was too tired to make a sarcastic comment on advertising where you were living at a time like this.

Her whole mind, what was left of it, was focused on getting to Capsule Corp. For, some time between the coyote and spotting the city, she had realised that in Capsule Corp was one of the smiles she had lost. Flirtatious, superior and proud for the most part, but it was a smile from Lunch's past. A piece of her that she had thought gone; a piece that she wanted it back..

If she had one smile, just one, then she knew she could hang on. It would be her anchor, she could sort out the Plan and everything could just go away afterwards for all she cared. This wasn't about saving the world; this was revenge pure and simple.

"Hell has no fury.." 

"Like a woman scorned.." mumbled a groggy voice from beside her. 

Still cursed with a lot of the impulsiveness of one of her previous selves, Lunch jerked around at the sound of the voice to see the purple haired boy lean up and rub his eyes. Once he had cleared his vision he studied his surroundings, his physical condition and finally Lunch herself. 

One fact burned into Lunch's mind in that moment; no matter how innocent the child seemed he was a warrior. His gaze didn't just take in her features; it sized her up from the inside out. While the other fighters she had met in her time had been subtler, it amounted to the same sort of thing. He took into account what danger she could pose and, this was the most worrying thing, then relaxed back into the chair. 

As if she couldn't do a thing to him.

This was the boy she was trying to protect?

[_The shotgun danced off the side of the wall she had been leaning against, rocking upwards to the extent that when the but hit the ground the gun appeared to point upwards. It swayed for a split second, and then gravity wrapped her fingers around it and bore it to the ground. _

_"Don't make any sudden movements, keep you're right hand up in the air. Now you're going to use your left hand to drop any weapons you might have on your person and if you're thinking that I've neither the guts nor the brains to pull the trigger, you're sorely mistaken."_

_Though she rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, Lunch did as she was told. After all, she thought as she reached behind the cover of her jacket and concentrated, the old coot had enough brains to sneak up on me. _

_She lifted up the handgun so he could see it, released it without a murmur and heard the soft thump as it landed beside the shotgun._

_"Any more requests?"_

_"The jacket, if you please."_

_She wouldn't have been Lunch if she hadn't said something._

_"My, my, the old rural stories really are-"_

_The gun in the old man's hands caught her in the back of the neck, closing her mouth with a snap._

_"Less chatter, more obedience." His tone didn't seem to be wavering with fear or quaking with desire, the gravelly tones that were emanating from behind her were steady and calm. Calmer than most who came to pointing guns at people. It came to the point where Lunch was willing to give the old man a little respect._

_She eased one arm out of the jacket, dropping the arm to her side as limply as her jacket. _

_"I think it'd be easier if you kept your hands up."_

_The arm bobbed up reluctantly, the old man wasn't slow. _

_"Now the other arm, if you please.."_

_The jacket fell away from her arm and landed softly on the grassy turf. As the last of the fabric settled down, Lunch came to a startling realization. She was out of ideas._]

"You'll be safe soon kid, bet you're hungry."

Non-committed shrug.

"Pretty cool how the old girl's held up this far, eh?"

Shrug.

Lunch glared out through the windshield. Insane people, she reasoned, shouldn't have to make conversation. The glimmers of dawn; the buildings that loomed over them; the empty feeling of the city, it was all adding to her unease. Mute super-children were the least of her worries; she had hoped to find a thriving metropolis surrounding Capsule Corp. Instead the place seemed to be a ghost town.

Ghosts – the dead rising upward – angry – betrayed – damned in failure – needing vengeance!

"Tien?" Lunch shook her head, but there were some bad thoughts that couldn't be dislodged so easily. When Tien had first died she had begged Choutzu, screamed at him to try and make a connection with Tien. The little one had been right to say no, there was no way Lunch could have even thought about getting over Tien if she could still talk to him. Not that she had gotten over him anyway.

"Did you say something?" 

The boy was sitting up now, that same penetrating stare boring into her - this time holding some sympathy at least. Keep your sympathy boy - you don't have a clue.

"I.." Lunch almost faltered, but the walls guarding her had been compressed into the mental equivalent of diamonds after everything she had been through, "I was just wondering where everyone's gone."

"No one lives in the city apart from Mom," he gave her a skeptical look – the most emotion he had shown in the whole journey – as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "and she's only there because no one can move all the equipment out of the house."

Had she heard him right, Chi-Chi Son (or Son Chi-Chi) was living at Capsule Corp now? 

Of course Chi-Chi had been a warrior too, quite strong apparently. The boy couldn't have been more than a year or two old when Goku died; it wasn't too far of a stretch to believe that Chi-Chi had trained him.

"What about the lights I saw driving in here?"

"That was Mr. Satan's idea, he's the leader of what's left of the city people." The boy turned away from Lunch and leaned back against the car seat, looked right through the ceiling as if reading off a list. "Those buildings are filled to the brim with explosives, even Mom volunteered some of the stuff in there. He figured that if the Android's were going to find the city anyway we should prepare for their arrival. There are a couple of sentry guns that look for figures moving without any Ki, that was Mom's idea. With all the explosions I'll know they're here, since they have no Ki that's always been a problem. I can power up and take them while their occupied."

He stopped and closed his eyes, his contribution officially over.

"And that will work?"

"Nope," he answered nonchalantly, "they're a lot smarter than they act, for all the games they play."

"And you can't beat them?" The boy flinched, but nodded.

"Not even Gohan could beat them, he was the strongest man who ever lived, stronger even than dad, and I'm still nowhere near his level."

Her heart in her throat but still trying to maintain her outward composure, Lunch kept her eyes on the road. It didn't help; he was staring at her again.

"You didn't know that, did you?"

She shook her head.

"I'm.. sorry, I miss him too. A lot." So the boy wasn't a statue; that was something at least. In fact, the brief glances she stole revealed that he felt Gohan's passing a lot harder than he admitted, well that made sense since they were brothers. 

Poor kid, she couldn't leave him dwelling on such a thing. 

"So where exactly is Capsule Corp, my memories a bit fuzzy." That was actually true; the streets were getting more and more confusing as she drove. The main problem was that the roads had been stripped of all metal, probably for their new camp. The buildings weren't much different, whomever Mr. Satan was he had thought things out.

The boy pointed out the various turnings, though the strained way he did it implied that he didn't go driving all that often. Must be nice to fly.

"You know," Lunch was beginning to relax, the shaking was gone from her hands and the two voices that were yelling in the background had become faint murmurs, "I still don't know your name."

"It's Trunks; Trunks Briefs."

[_Lunch took in the details of the house swiftly - it wasn't difficult._

_"I love what you've done with the place."_

_"Why thank you, just keep walking miss."_

_The inside of the house was in just as much disrepair as the outside, broken furniture was scattered everywhere along with a few rotting articles of food and clothing. There was even some animal excrement scattered around the place for good measure, it was the most deserted house Lunch had ever seen._

_You had to admire the mind that had thought the whole thing up._

_Out of the corner of her eye Lunch could see a figure, maybe 6,2, following them. Male or female, handsome or ugly, the details were lost to her. The old man either didn't notice or didn't care but that didn't mean anything, he didn't appear to care whether she lived or died either. They crossed the main room quickly, stopping at the far wall where a broken and dust covered bookcase lent crookedly against the wall._

_"Thomas, I'd be obliged if you'd open the door."_

_The figure stepped into plain view, a man with black scruffy hair and wide shoulders. His gaze was fixed on the ground, arms swinging limply by his side as he approached the bookcase, as if he was embarrassed by her presence. He hesitated for a second, and then his strong arms seized the bookcase and without any of the strain Lunch had came to expect from lesser men forced it backwards along the wooden floor._

_"Good boy, now clean up after us before coming down."_

_Thomas nodded almost franticly, then retreated back out of sight though Lunch wasn't paying attention to him anymore. Behind the bookcase had been hidden a broken wooden door which, she was guessing, led down to the cellar where the old man and his son lived._

_The sham extended past the door and into the stairs, which creaked and groaned in the darkness, but about then things began to change. It was admirable really; the supports that held up the ceiling looked old and battered but behind the cracked wood Lunch could just see the dull gleam of metal. The door at the end of the stairs was the same, wooden shell built around a metal door that was probably a lot thicker than it looked. _

_"Now miss, if you'd be so kind as to press your fingers where the door knob would normally be."_

_Lunch did so, curious in spite of herself, and her questing fingers were rewarded with a quiet click, and the wooden flap swung outwards and was lifted up to reveal a metal panel with an 8-digit code key. There weren't any movie-style panels where some high-tech device could be hooked up, just the buttons and the door. If you didn't have the code you'd stay outside for a long time._

_"Its 2365 miss, and mind you don't type in the wrong numbers. That'd be bad."_

_She did as he said for she was now, after seeing all she had seen, beginning to form a picture of what sort of man she was dealing with. The door swung open slowly, slow enough that anyone on the inside would know someone was coming before they got in, and confirmed her fears. _

_The door opened onto a large metallic room – not just one, she realised. It was a whole house buried in the earth; to her right she could see through an open door into a store room packed with cans of preserved, to her left she could see bunk beds – three she would remember later – and right in front of her a dinner table set with ammunition and rifles. The very sight of them made her fingers itch but she suppressed the urge. For as the huge metallic door swung shut she knew with unerring certainty where she was now. _

_The home of the paranoid delusional.]_


End file.
